Software compilers compile source code in a source language into target code in a target language. The target code may be executed directly by a data processing system or linked by a suitable linker with other target code for execution by the data processing system.
Typical data processing systems include a microprocessor in which execution of software instructions and manipulation of data occurs. In many programming environments, integer and transaction-processing workloads form a significant portion of microprocessor use. The workloads are derived from application programs, which are typically written in high-level languages such as C and C++. Programs written in these languages often make pervasive use of pointers, which are variables used in a software program that contain a reference to an address of a memory region in which data or a function is stored. Further, these programs often make use of pointer-based dynamic data structures. Effective exploitation of instruction-level parallelism (ILP) in such programs is significantly aided by the ability of a compiler to accurately disambiguate pointer-based memory references.
Disambiguation of pointer-based references typically requires pointer analysis. However, even an expensive, sophisticated pointer analysis cannot disambiguate all pointer references, especially references to dynamically allocated structures. Because the majority of pointer references in many programs are field accesses to such dynamically allocated structures, a need exists to accurately and efficiently disambiguate these references.